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PLASSEY THREAD:
1/13 TODAY marks 263 years since the Battle of Plassey. But the statue of Robert Clive says very little. So what happened? We at http://change.org/RemoveClive were joined by historian @NVJRobins1, author of The Corporation Who Changed the World, to learn about it.
1/13 TODAY marks 263 years since the Battle of Plassey. But the statue of Robert Clive says very little. So what happened? We at http://change.org/RemoveClive were joined by historian @NVJRobins1, author of The Corporation Who Changed the World, to learn about it.
2/13 This will be a little taster of his first virtual tour of the presence (and absence) of the East India Company in London today, on **MONDAY 6TH JULY at 7PM** run by our new series of teach-ins, History of Everyone Else.
3/13 Live, work, or study in Westminster? Make sure to sign the council petition. If we reach 500 signatures, it will be debated by the Cabinet. https://petitions.westminster.gov.uk/RemoveClive/
4/13 Was Plassey just a battle? For the East India Company, it was its best business deal, and Clive bribed his way to victory, going on to loot Bengal.
5/13 The panel shows Clive as pensive. Getting ready to forge some contracts, as he did with Amir Chand?
6/13 The East India Company, a shareholder-owned corporation, took over Bengal and put its puppet rulers on the throne.
7/13 The EIC was able to establish a market monopoly so offensive it angered thinkers across the political spectrum, including Adam Smith.
8/13 Clive acquired the diwani, or tax office of Bengal. He quickly drained India’s wealth in what was known as the “unrequited trade.”
9/13 In 1769, a drought came to Bengal. Nevertheless, the company controlled the grain harvest and increased taxes, leading to the death of a minimum of one million people.
10/13 The East India Company initially had to export gold and silver to pay for India’s goods. After Plassey, Clive reversed the flow of wealth so that it now went from East to West. It has stayed that way ever since.
11/13 The EIC then started the world’s greatest drug trade: the opium trade. To gain power in China, the Company smuggled opium grown in Bengal, leading to millions of deaths.
12/13 “Clive has no place outside the Foreign Office” - some hundred metres from No. 10, and (as Nick explains in his book) looking out to properties he could only ever have bought because of his loot.
13/13 To learn more, please sign up for our virtual walking tour on Robert Clive with Nick Robins on **MONDAY 6TH JULY at 7PM** https://forms.gle/nY6zw2Z2BgcYTKGcA
